John McDonnell insisted a new Tory leader would face moral pressure to call an election.
Photograph: Andy Rain/EPA

Labour will try to force a vote of no confidence in the next prime minister as soon as they take office, John McDonnell said, as Conservative candidates throw their hats into the ring to succeed Theresa May.

Asked on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme if Labour would call a no-confidence motion in the next Tory leader, the shadow chancellor said: “Yes, because we believe any incoming prime minister in these circumstance should go to the country anyway and seek a mandate.”

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The most recent Opinium poll of general election voting intentions, published almost a fortnight ago, put Labour seven points ahead of the Conservatives, on 29%. In second place was Nigel Farage’s new Brexit party, on 24%.

The Tory leadership hopeful Matt Hancock said on Saturday he would refuse calls for a general election if he succeeded May, saying that to do so would be “a disaster for the country” and would risk “Corbyn by Christmas”.

When May called a general election in 2017 in an attempt to shore up her mandate she lost the Conservative party’s majority in the Commons.

McDonnell insisted that a new Tory leader would face moral pressure to call a general election in order to secure a democratic mandate. “That’s the first thing,” he told ITV News on Friday evening.

“The second thing of course [is that] we always have the opportunity of a no-confidence motion in parliament, and we will explore that. And the way in which the Conservative party remains divided, whoever is elected as their leader, there will be a prospect that some Conservative MPs now will think maybe we should go back to the country.”